Locally, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas and U.S. District Judge Terry Means in Fort Worth have sentenced crack defendants on a 1 to 1 ratio, said Richard Anderson, head of the federal public defender’s office for the Northern District of Texas. U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn has “reached the equivalent result through use of a variance, but I don’t believe she stated the ratio on the record,” he said.

This past Tuesday, on March 30, U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler became the first judge in the neighboring Eastern District of Texas to issue such a sentence, according to an alert sent out by Kenneth Hawk, with the federal defender’s office in Tyler.
According to Hawk:

Judge Davis adopted the current national trend toward equalization of the two forms of the same drug, rejected the Guidelines in their current form, and declared that beginning today and from this point forward, he will sentence Defendants convicted of Federal crack cocaine offenses the same as if the form of the cocaine was powder. Kimbrough was of enormous benefit to the Court in his decision.

This decision had and will have a profound impact in that the first two defendants went from 70-87 months down to 24 months and from 108-135 months to 60 months on the second (mandatory minimum prevented further reduction).

Please note that, to our knowledge, no other Eastern District Courts have granted [or even ruled] on the recent Motions, but Judge Schneider has a sentencing on this issue next week so stay tuned.